Her class was History of Magic, which was a lucky thing, since Ginny had lost all ability to function and couldn't have paid attention or taken notes if she wanted to.
Harry had the diary! He was carrying it around with him! Had Tom told him? But Tom mightn't tell him--oh, this was all so confusing, and the worst part was that she couldn't talk to anyone about it. She liked Carmen and Jeremy's company too much to risk it by revealing that she had--
"Ginny?"
She jumped about a foot. "W-what?"
Carmen eyed her sympathetically. "Class is over."
"Yeah, we need to get to Charms," Jeremy said. "After that, you can wallow about your valentine, but for right now, get a move on, all right?"
Carmen trod very heavily on his foot. "Shut it."
Ginny put her hands to her flaming face. The valentine. She hadn't even thought about the botched valentine since she'd seen the diary in Malfoy's hand. For a few moments there, it had the most embarrassing experience of her life, of course, but it didn't matter now. Not next to the diary, and Tom, and Harry so close to both of them.
But if Carmen and Jeremy thought her distraction was due to that, then they wouldn't ask questions, and she would be safe.
For the moment.
"A-all right," she said, gathering her things and trying to act like someone whose worst concern was the way she'd been spectacularly humiliated in front of a large portion of the school. "I'm coming."
If that had really been her only concern, it would have been a very bad evening for Ginny.
Fred and George, who had not been there but who had heard about it in excruciating detail, had memorized the little song. Fred had taken the melody and George the harmony, and they sang it for hours, to the undying mirth of most of the common room. Carmen kept patting Ginny's arm and whispering, "It's okay, it's okay--"
If things had been different, Carmen would have been a godsend. As it was, she kept Ginny from flying to pieces, just by trying to distract her with games of Exploding Snap, bits of gossip, and attempts at chess. She even had a hissed, finger-waggling talk with Jeremy, after which he brought Ginny a Chocolate Frog and didn't say anything witty about the valentine, even though Ginny knew he dearly wanted to.
Harry seemed to have permanently turned beet-red, and every one of the six or seven hundred times she happened to be looking in his direction, he'd slunk a little lower in his chair.
Can I possibly tell him? she asked herself, staring dully at the Chocolate Frog until it hopped into the fire and melted. Oh, no, no, no . . . She couldn't even speak to Harry without squeaking like a mouse that had been trodden on. But--Ron?
Ron had told her she would be expelled, back when Mrs. Norris had been Petrified. Of course, he hadn't known--how could he have known? He'd only said, "They'll catch the nutter who did this and have him out of here in no time. I only hope he's got time to Petrify Filch before he's expelled--"
Expelled. She would be expelled. How could they do anything else to her? And then her parents--Mum and Dad would be so disappointed and ashamed of her, and all her brothers would have to pretend that they didn't have a sister anymore, because she'd been letting the monster out of the Chamber of Secrets, and it would just be horrible for the whole family. And she'd have to live as an outcast from everybody--maybe even go to Azkaban . . .
What was she going to do? What on earth was she going to do?
As Fred and George came to the end of their final chorus of Ginny's valentine, warbling the last note like half of a barbershop quartet, Harry abruptly got up from his chair and made for the stairs. "'M tired. Going to bed," Harry said in answer to Ron's question. "G'night."
He fled up the stairs, to a roar of laughter.
"Tired, indeed!" Fred chortled. "Prob'ly wants to compose his reply . . ."
At that, Ginny lost all patience. She grabbed up the chessboard and heaved it straight at her brothers' heads. They were caught so far off their guard that they didn't even duck the shrieking chess pieces.
"Ginny! What--!?"
She found herself standing on the seat of her chair, hands fisted on her hips. "Oh, honestly, you two, it's not that funny! Just you--just shut up laughing! Just--" Her words devolved into a terrified squeak when she realized that her voice was the only sound in the entire common room. Everyone was staring at her with wide eyes and slack jaws. "Just leave it," she finished weakly.
Fred looked like a goldfish, his mouth opening and shutting without any sound coming out. George was staring at her as if she were a Purple People Eater.
"Now--" she said. "If you don't mind--I--I--I'm going--to the--library." Head high, she stepped from the cushion to the foot rest and then to the floor and strode to the portrait hole through a roar of silence.
"Don't you want your bag?" Carmen ventured meekly.
"No, that's quite all right . . . I'll be--back later . . ." She climbed through the portrait hole and shut it firmly behind her, then sagged against the wall.
"Are you all right, dear?" the Fat Lady asked.
"No," Ginny moaned. "Nooooooooo . . ."
Inside the still-silent common room, George touched his forehead, where a red lump was already coming up from the impact of Ginny's queen piece. "Well," he said to George, "looks like Ginny's come back to herself."
Fred looked down at the chessboard, which was lying cockeyed on the floor, and felt his scalp. "Guess we should be careful what we wish for, eh?"
For the next few days, most of Gryffindor tower tiptoed around Ginny as they might around a sleeping panther. However, when she showed no more signs of erratic behavior, most of them put it away into a file labeled, "Weasleys--who knows?" and forgot about it. Ginny barely noticed. After her rather spectacular flash of temper, she sank back into her dark thoughts.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione had taken to having urgent, whispered conversations in the corner of the common room. They looked like they were arguing about something, but every time Ginny (or indeed anyone) tried to sneak close enough to hear what it was, Ron abruptly started talking about Cannons Quidditch in a loud voice, or Hermione began scolding them about homework, or Harry simply picked himself up and suggested going to the library.
At first, Ginny was terrified that the worst had happened, and Tom had betrayed her. But none of them treated her at all differently than normal. Hermione was still briskly detached, Ron still ignored her except when he wanted someone to make fun of, and Harry . . . was just . . . Harry.
He never once turned the full force of his sweet unexpected smile on her. His eyes did not light up when he caught sight of her. And of course he never suddenly said, "Why, Virginia, I never noticed how beautiful you were before! Let's leave your brothers behind and ride off into the sunset, shall we?"
But then again, neither did he turn away from her in disgust, or denounce her in front of the entire school--"Do you know what that stupid little girl has been doing?"
The lack of one just about made up for the lack of the other, she decided. Never before had she been so happy for him to ignore her.
Perhaps she was worrying about nothing.
It was so much nicer and easier to believe that Harry had avoided writing in the diary. Perhaps he'd tossed it out. Perhaps he was using it to prop up a wobbly chair in his dormitory room. Perhaps it was gathering dust and sock lint under his bed.
(What, then, were they discussing so urgently?)
Ginny lay awake at night and worried. Tom had fooled her so easily . . .
But after all, Harry was not her. He wasn't a silly little first year, so lonely and self-absorbed and self-pitying that he would grasp at any friend that offered. He had friends already. He didn't need Tom.
But Tom was so . . .
She turned to her side, pulling her knees up to her chest and ducking her chin down so she was curled as tight as possible. She entertained a brief fantasy of being a sponge, so if she squeezed herself tighter and tighter, she might somehow squeeze all this trouble and worry away. Then she watch it go swirling down a drain and it would be gone forever . . .
With a sigh, she uncurled and stretched her legs out again, shivering slightly when they encountered the cooler sheets further down the bed. She wasn't a sponge, and this wasn't about to go swirling down a drain. She had to figure out what to do.
She tucked her hands under her pillow and tried to think about it logically.
If Harry had the diary, but wasn't writing in it (but what if he is? whimpered her worries. Stop that, Ginny, her logical brain said sharply), that meant that no-one else was, either. If no-one wrote in the diary, Tom couldn't get out, and all the attacks would stop. Everyone would assume that the monster had left, and when the Mandrakes were ready in the springtime, the Restorative Draught would wake all the Petrified victims up and the whole mess would be over, and no-one need ever know about her involvement in it.
Ginny basked in that lovely vision for several minutes before logic forced her to go on.
On the other hand, if Harry had the diary, and he was writing in it, that meant that it was only a matter of time before Tom got to him the way he'd gotten to Ginny. The monster would get out again. And this time, when people accused him of being the Heir of Slytherin, they would be very nearly right . . .
Was it worth banking on her own observations? If she was wrong, she would only discover it when someone else got Petrified.
But what could she possibly do about it? All she could do was get the diary away from him--but what then? She couldn't throw it away again. That wasn't at all safe. She didn't know how Tom had done it, but somehow he'd rescued himself from the toilet and put himself into Harry's hands.
The thought of keeping it made the bile rise in her throat. Knowing now what Tom was and what he had done to her when she'd believed so completely that he was her only friend, the mere thought of the diary made her stomach twist. Could she bear to keep it?
A haunting thought floated across her brain. Could she bear to keep it and not write in it?
Ginny rejected that straight away. She knew Tom now. She knew what he was. She knew what he could do. She wasn't going to make the same mistake twice.
And surely, surely, Harry wasn't nearly so silly as she had been. Surely they would both be safest if she just left it where it was.
For several weeks, Ginny repeated that to herself every morning and every night. Harry was fine. He wasn't acting strange at all. Tom wasn't getting to him. She was safe. They were safe.
But as the days wore on, and Ginny's fingernails slowly started to retreat back down toward her fingertips, the words started sounding hollow.
Because honestly, Harry wasn't fine. He was worried, and unhappy, and seemed to go around in a muddled haze so that when anyone spoke to him, he lifted his head and blinked like a swimmer coming out of deep water. One day just before Easter holidays, Ginny even saw him snap at Hagrid, who reared back, looking confused and hurt.
"Sorry, Hagrid," Harry said swiftly. "There's just--I've got something on my mind, is all."
"Ah," Hagrid said. "Choosin' yer subjects for next year, eh? I 'member the first time I did that--" He sighed. "On'y time . . ."
"Yeah, that's it. Hagrid, think I should take Care of Magical Creatures? Fred and George like it, but I dunno--"
Ginny slipped away, her hand already drifting to her mouth. At noon, she barely ate one bite of her spotted dick, even though it was her favorite.
"Something wrong?" Jeremy asked her when she offered the remains to him.
"No," she said.
"You sure?"
"Yes." She gathered herself together. "I'm tired. I think I'll go back to the tower and take a nap before class."
"A nap!" Jeremy said.
Carmen caught up with her halfway down the Great Hall. "I just got the new 'Young Witch' magazine this morning. You want to read it together?"
"No, I really am tired."
"All right. If you want it, you can ask."
Ginny sighed inwardly. She appreciated Carmen's concern, honestly she did, but not right at this very moment. More than anything, she'd wanted solitude in the dormitory think things over. Maybe she could close her curtains, and Carmen would at least think she really was sleeping.
As they climbed into the common room, Harry was hunched over staring at the fire, his elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands. Ron was standing over him, evidently trying to talk him out of his mood.
Impulsively, Ginny slipped her hand into the pocket of her robes and retrieved a spare quill. Letting it drift through her fingers to land on the floor behind the couch, she continued on with Carmen halfway up the stairs. Then she put her hand in her pocket. "Oh!"
"What is it?"
"I must have dropped my quill in the common room," Ginny said, turning back.
"It'll still be there later," Carmen called out after her.
"S'my favorite! I'll be up in a mo."
"Come on," Ron was saying as Ginny crouched down for her quill. "How do you even know he was telling the truth?"
Harry's robes rustled against the chair as he shifted restlessly. "It looked like something that really happened. How could he have made all that up?"
All what up? Who was he?
"Hermione's worried about you, you know. You're letting that Tom Riddle character get to you, mate."
Ginny's fingers clenched so convulsively that the quill broke with a sharp crack.
At the sound, Ron looked over his shoulder and opened his mouth. Before he could betray her presence to Harry, Ginny took to her heels.
"Since when do you have a favorite quill?" Carmen asked when she got into the first-year's dormitory.
Ginny didn't answer, but only tossed the broken quill onto her night stand and threw herself face-down on her bed.
"Ginny? What's wrong?"
She hadn't the foggiest idea of how she was going to save Harry, but she knew she had to. She was the only one who knew what that diary could do to people . . .
"Ginny?"
It had been bad enough thinking that Tom would merely tell Harry about her role in the opening of the Chamber of Secrets, but that Tom would actually dare to--
Would he? Would he honestly?
Oh yes.
She had to stop it happening. She knew what it was like, losing bits and pieces of your life, and watching the results throw an entire school into turmoil.
Maybe, because she knew Tom, and she knew what he did, she could withstand it, and could keep him from getting into her head. Harry didn't know, and might not realize what he was doing while he was doing it, as she hadn't. Maybe, now that she knew, she could hold Tom off. And Harry would be out of danger.
"Ginny!"
She sat up to find Carmen staring at her. "What?"
"I'm asking you what upset you."
"It's all right, Carmen." Ginny's mouth firmed. "I'm going to take care of it."
She had to get that diary back.
In spite of her brave words to Carmen, Ginny was petrified. In fact, she might have been better off if she really were Petrified. At least then she wouldn't have to move through her normal life while all these mad things were happening around her. In some ways, she envied the people in the hospital wing that she'd gotten to.
The biggest problem, especially during the Easter holidays, was that there always seemed to be somebody in Harry's dormitory, and whenever there wasn't, she was with Carmen and Jeremy. They were watching her very hard now, trying to figure out what the problem was. No matter how much she wanted to shake them for that, they were still her friends.
Then, one Friday evening, her opportunity cropped up.
Jeremy was trying to teach Carmen to play chess, and she was shaking her head. Her chessmen from Christmas were so new still that they couldn't help her out, only squealing with fear whenever Jeremy's approached. Ginny was watching, smiling in spite of herself.
"Ginny," he called out to her, exasperated. "Run upstairs, would you, and get your chessmen. I want a real game."
"Oh, I--" She paused and looked around the room.
Harry wasn't there, because there was a game tomorrow and Wood had called one last practice. Ron was by the fire, trying to talk Hermione into putting her book down and playing cards with him. Neville Longbottom had left for yet another Snape detention. All the other boys who slept in that dormitory--and she knew them by sight now--were scattered throughout the common room, absorbed in their various pursuits.
And she had the perfect excuse.
"I'll be just a minute," she said brightly, then leapt out of her chair and bolted up the stairs.
Her floor was one down from the second-years. She thundered past it, gasping for breath. They did have to be at the very top!
She paused in front of the boys' dormitory, panting. There were voices chattering behind the girls' door. She knocked softly at the boys', praying she hadn't missed somebody.
Nobody answered.
Perfect.
She nudged the door open, slipped inside, and kicked it shut. Then she looked around.
She'd never been in a boys' dorm before, but not for nothing did she have six brothers. She paid no mind to the piles of dirty socks, the Quidditch magazines tossed on top of unmade beds, the lurid posters on the wall--that'd be Ron's bed, that one--
But which one was Harry's?
For a horrible moment, she thought she was going to have to go through all of them. Then she saw a green jumper tossed over the end of one bed, its arm trailing on the floor. A Weasley jumper! Harry's Weasley jumper!
She dove for it, shaking it hopefully. Nothing. She seized the covers on his bed--this is Harry's bed! he sleeps on it!--and wrenched them off. No cheap little diary clattered to the floor. She grabbed the pillow. Bare sheets.
His cloak hung over a chair, and she snatched it so quickly that it ripped. She couldn't spare the time to feel bad--there was nothing in it but Dumbledore's Chocolate Frog card.
She spun and wrenched the drawer out of his bedside table. Spare quills, ink bottles, parchment, sweets, chessmen, and Exploding Snap cards cascaded down over the mattress she'd laid bare. A thick, heavy photo album bounced off the mattress and hit her foot.
"Owwwww! Oooo--owww!"
She slapped her hand over her mouth and went still. There were no footsteps, no "Who's in there?" After a moment she relaxed.
Think, stupid, think think thinkthinkthink!
His schoolbag! Of course!
She dumped it out all over the floor. Books thudded, ink splattered, and pages flew. But no diary.
She dove for his wardrobe and went through all the pockets of his robes, turning them inside out. She found two broken quills and a half-eaten Chocolate Frog, but no diary.
What if he has it right now? What if he's carrying it with him all the time like I did?
Only one place left!
She wrenched up the lid of his trunk and was instantly confronted with a jumble of disorganized knickknacks. She heaved aside Quidditch Through the Ages, a pair of ugly mustard-colored socks, two Lockhart books, assorted sweets, and--
There!
She snatched up the diary and started to open it, then slammed it shut. She didn't want to even look at the pages.
Instead, she stared at the mess she'd left behind her. Harry's things were scattered all over the bed and the floor. Chocolate Frog was ground into the floorboards. The photo album was right in the path of a pool of spreading ink.
She darted in to pick that up, brushing it off tenderly before placing it on his bed in a bare patch. It looked as if someone had taken great care with it--the only scuff marks on the leather were ones she'd put there. Whatever photos Harry had, she didn't want to see them destroyed because of her.
For a moment, she thought about trying to neaten the rest of it up, but she'd already been gone for so long that she was going to have to make up a story to explain her absence to Jeremy and Carmen.
Oh, Harry, I'm sorry, really I am, but--you don't know what kind of danger you're in--I had to--
With a guilty swallow, she turned away from her mess and slipped out the door.